Rosa Luxemburg

“ Of course we are living in an age of capitalism. Of course we will continue to have class struggles after the great war is over. But these class struggles will be fought out in a freer state, they will be far more confined to the economic field than before. In the future the treatment of Socialists as outcasts, as citizens of the second class, as politically rightless will be impossible, once the Czardom of Russia has vanished. ”

“ A clear and definite purpose still lives in the German working-class, though the thunder of a world-war is crashing over its head. It will defend itself from the allies of Russian barbarism in the west to bring about an honorable peace. It will give to the task of destroying Czarism the last breath of man and beast."
After the social-democratic group had stamped the war as a war of defense for the German nation and European culture, the social-democratic press proceeded to hail it as the "savior of the oppressed nations." ”

“ But German reaction checked the revolutionary movement. From Berlin and Vienna came declarations of war, and the Russian revolution was buried beneath its wreckage. "German guns" are shattering, not Czarism, but its most dangerous enemy. The hopefully fluttering flag of the revolution sank down amid a wild whirlpool of war. ”

“ On the contrary, German and French money is rolling to Petersburg to feed a regime that would long ago have breathed its last without this life-giving juice. Russian Czarism is today no longer the product of Russian conditions; its root lies in the capitalist conditions of western Europe. And the relationship is shifting from decate to decade. In the same measure as the old root of Russian absolutism in Russia itself is being destroyed, the new, west-European root is growing stronger and stronger. ”

“ If this country is threatened by Russia's determination, then the Social-Democrats, since the fight is against Russian Blood-Czarism, against the perpetrator of a million crimes against freedom and culture, will allow none to excell them in the fulfilment of their duty, in their willingness to sacrifice. ”

“ Russian support against the revolution in Germany is supersededby German aid against the revolution in Russia. Spies, outrages, betrayals—a demagogic agitation, like that which blessed the times of the Holy Alliance, was unleashed in Germany against the fighters for the cause of Russian freedom, and followed them to the very doorsteps of the Russian Revolution. ”

“ As revolutionary forces arise from the womb of the Russian people itself to fight against Russian absolutism, they meet with. an ever growing resistence in western Europe, which stands ready to lend to threatened Czarism its moral and political support. ”

“ Prussia at that time, as today, can give to other peoples nothing but its own junker rule. The republican France was the ripe fruit of inner social struggles and of the three revolutions that had preceded it. ”

“ The irresistible force of military preparation drives everything before it. But the class-conscious labor movement obeys, not an outside force, but its own conviction, when it defends the ground upon which it stands, from attack in the east. ”

“ European reaction once more hastened to help its endangered protégé. Not with lead and bullets, although "German guns" were in German fists even in 1905 and only waited for a signal from Petersburg to attack the neighboring Poles. Europe rendered an assistance that was equally valuable: financial subsidy and political alliances were arranged to help Czarism in Russia. French money paid for the armed forces that broke down the Russian Revolution ”

“ Some of them, for instance, the agrarian problem, cannot possibly be solved with capitalist society. There was the difficulty, furthermore, of creating a class-state for the supremacy of the modern bourgeoisie against the counter-revolutionary opposition of the bourgeoisie as a whole. ”

“ Even should they desire to do so, they could find nothing to defend but their chains. And so they live and toil, hoping and longing that German rifles, carried by German men, will crush the whole Czarist system. ”

“ This trial threw a scathing light upon a whole historical development since 1848 and showed the complete change of relations between Russian absolutism and European reaction. "Tua res agitur!" cried a Prussian Minister of Justice to the ruling classes of Germany, pointing to the tottering foundation of the Czarist regime. "The establishment of a democratic republic in Russia would strongly influence Germany," declared First District-Attorney Schulze in Koenigsberg. "When my neighbor's home burns my own is also.in danger." ”